Year 4's Greek Days

MONDAY 2^ND JULY 2012 – A PERSIAN ARMY INVASION!
An all-day history lesson! First thing in the morning the Year 4’s selected whether they were a member of the Athenian Army or the Persian Army, we then researched information and facts about the famous Battle of Marathon in 490BC. All the children learned so many facts and I was so proud of the amount of facts they remembered. They then had to imagine they were either an Athenian Hoplite solider or a Persian soldier and had to write an imaginary recount (either as a diary or a letter) of their experiences of the battle. Some of their work was outstanding and the boys especially liked embellishing the gruesome details…

“As I tentatively marched into battle, I felt a shiver run down my spine. As I saw the Persian army, my whole body turned to stone. Just then, we started to sing our war cry and we started to charge towards the Persians. When we got closer, I smashed someone aside with my shield and put my sword right through his chest, I heard his rib cage crack and I saw my sword go out the back of him. When I retracted my sword, it was stained with his red blood”. By Cabe

After our research and recounts, we looked at Greek armoury – especially their shields and designed and made our own shields based on Greek designs.

We re-enacted the Battle of Marathon in the hall.

The Greek Army – outnumbered but ready to do battle

The Perisan Army – looking confident!

The fierce battle took place.

Victorious!  The children all agreed that today was the best all day history lesson ever!

Tuesday 3^rd July

After yesterday’s battle, we moved forward 2500 years to 2012.  Marathon running, takes its name taken from the Battle of Marathon and a poor solider called  Philippides who ran from Athens to Sparta (150 miles), in two days and two nights, then fought at the Battle of Marathon, then ran from Marathon to Athens (26 miles) to tell the people of Athens that Persian Army were defeated. He died upon reaching Athens from exhaustion – his extraordinary running became an Olympic sport in the Ancient Greek Olympic Games and is still run today all over the world.  So today, we decided to look at the modern Olympic Games.  In 1896 the modern Olympic Games were reintroduced and held in Paris and 11 nations took part.  This year in London 2012 a total of 216 nations will compete.  The children had a mammoth maths lesson where they had to plot, using a line graph the number of nations taking part in each of the Olympic since 1896 – they then had research why the games were cancelled in 1914, 1940 and 1944.  They also had to explain why there was a drop in nations attending the games in 1976 and 1980.

After two lessons of maths – it was a lengthy task!  We turned to London 2012.  Did you know that London is the only city to host the modern Olympic Games three times!  We drew famous London landmark and monuments for our display. 

After lunch, we discussed what the Olympics means to us and looked at the Olympic values.  The children were tasked with making a mobile out of collage materials to represent London 2012 for them – this could include Olympic symbols, favourite sports, buildings, healthy lifestyle, etc.  The results look amazing, please do come into class to have a look.

  

Wednesday 4^th July – A TRULY GREEK DAY

Another historical day with a fun element -  Thank you to everyone for the costumes you provided your children, everybody made such an effort and they all looked amazing. First activity of the day – Greek Cooking.  The children children baked Milopita, Melopita, Greek almond butter biscuits and cookies.  A lot of finger licking and bowl cleaning was needed !

After lunch we learnt how to Greek dance

Thank you year 4’s for a brilliant three days you were all superb J